


i've got you written (in a black book)

by sure sure (getoffmysheets)



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst and Feels, Explicit Language, Hanahaki Disease, Language of Flowers, M/M, Possibly Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-01
Updated: 2019-11-01
Packaged: 2021-01-16 02:29:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,725
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21263603
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/getoffmysheets/pseuds/sure%20sure
Summary: Billy Hargrove's heart is killing him.





	i've got you written (in a black book)

**Author's Note:**

> hi i love pain
> 
> Title is from "Something to Believe In" by Young the Giant

The night after meeting Steve Harrington, Billy coughs up a handful of gardenia petals into the bathroom sink as he’s brushing his teeth in the morning. He pauses, staring at the thick white petals sitting in the curve of the sink. It’s never happened to him before, so he shoves one into his pocket and throws the others into the trash. Billy drops Max off at the middle school, then skips first period to spend time in the library.

He doesn’t ask the librarian for help and he makes certain that no one is watching before snatching the volume he wants from the shelf – he has to page carefully through the glossy photos before finding the one he wants.

GARDENIA  
Genus: _Gardenia_  
Meaning: secret love, “you’re lovely!”

Billy’s shoulders loosen with relief. He has no doubts in his mind about which person he’s spitting flowers for, but this isn’t so bad. Some people, when they get Hanahaki disease, start vomiting red roses and shit like that. Shit that you know is an instant death sentence, the kind of love you can’t just get over.

Gardenias? That’s not that bad. _“you’re lovely!”_

Well, yeah. Steve Harrington is the hottest piece of ass in this worthless shithole town, anybody with eyes can see that. So, he’s got a crush.

It doesn’t have to _mean_ anything, not in the long term.

Basketball practice is entering a level of hell heretofore unknown to mankind. Harrington, all strong lanky limbs and big soft eyes, following each other around the court, Billy grinding his teeth at the almost total lack of effort he puts into it. Oh, and worse! The showers!

Harrington brings his own shampoo, and it fills the space with the smell of him. Billy has the perfect view of his broad shoulders and flat soft abdominals and the artful grace of his fingers scrubbing through his wet hair.

He stares, though Harrington doesn’t even seem to give a shit. Harrington, he’s noticed, doesn’t seem to give a shit about a whole hell of a lot, especially after Wheeler dumped him. Billy would be worried, if he were the type of person to worry about other people. He stares, he leers, he taunts – trying to get _some_ kind of reaction, even if it’s a punch in the face – then when no one is left in the locker room, he coughs up bright red daisy blossoms (_beauty unknown to the possessor_) and the silky petals of orange lilies (_desire, passion, hatred_).

He laughs hysterically at that. Hanahaki is supposed to be about the pure devotion of an unrequited love, but Billy can’t even do that right. He vomits up sentiments of carnal desire and hate for his so-called ‘beloved’. It’s further proof, in his mind, that this whole thing is nothing but a fucking long-term boner. It’s an intense boner, don’t get him wrong. (He dreams in kiss-bitten lips, long black lashes, and the profoundly perfect curves of Harrington’s thighs and calves. Yeah. Yeah, it’s…intense.)

Billy’s pretty sure he’d have nothing more to say about Harrington after pulling that ass over his dick once or twice. He would even be nice about it – suck off that big gorgeous dick for him, deep and messy, the way he’s absolutely certain the girls in this town are either too stuck-up or too intimidated to do for him. Then Billy would show him the joy of the sweet spot waiting to be played with in his tight little hole. But if he busted a nut in that (lovely, breathtaking) ass, he’s sure the shine of ‘true love’ would wear off afterwards.

He’s absolutely convinced of this until the night that Maxine sneaks out the house.

The moment Harrington steps out of the house and onto the porch, Billy stares at him and feels a tickle in the back of his throat, and when he coughs, a carnation the deep scarlet of fresh blood falls into his hand. He doesn’t even need to look into the book he stole from the school library to know that this new development is bad.

It makes him angry and he loses his temper. The sight of Harrington’s face drives him half-mad, sometimes.

He wakes up on the Byers’ house, hours later, and has to stand, bent over the weird papers on the living room. He coughs up another scarlet carnation and throws it in the grass as he stumbles back out the drive. When he checks the book, he nearly chucks the fucking thing into the woods.

CARNATION (see also: _PINK_, _SWEET WILLIAM_)  
Genus: _Dianthus_  
Meaning: fascination  
-> Carnation (red): admiration, _“my heart aches for you!”_

Max is gonna get herself – meaning Billy – in trouble with her antics, following Sinclair and the nerds around, but he obeys her command to stay away from them. All of them.

He watches Harrington watching Wheeler at the Snow Ball, and it’s torture. He doesn’t even understand why it hurts so bad and then he’s smoking a cigarette, leaning up against the Camaro, and when he coughs into his fist, thin papery petals swirl into the cold night air. He stares at the ground, gaze captured by the oddly poetic image of the delicate-looking deep pink flowers, trodden into the dirty snow.

His hands shake, and he can’t bring himself compare the petals to the pictures in his stolen book. He makes himself do it the next morning, when one of them floats in his morning coffee. Quickly, he plucks it out of his cup and rinses it off carefully beneath the bathroom faucet, before Neil can see. He makes himself put it in his pocket instead of flushing it down the toilet.

He has to wait until Max is gone before he can pull the book from its hiding place beneath the driver’s seat.

CAMELLIA  
Genus: Camellia  
Meaning: admiration, perfection  
-> Camellia, pink: “_longing for you_!”

Billy rests his forehead on the pictures of the high-gloss pages and wonders what the fuck he’s gonna do.

He becomes…achingly familiar with the camellia, and eventually adds white _(“you’re adorable!_”) and red _(“you’re a flame in my heart!”_) to the flood of petals that emerge.

He says something snotty to Tommy in bio that earns him a smile, half-hidden, his soft brown eyes glittering and a light blush dusting the tops of his cheeks. Three long yellow petals emerge when he coughs into his hand and he shoves them into a random pants pocket before anyone can see.

He knows what they are – he doesn’t have to explore. Sunflowers were his mother’s favorite flower. He knows what they look like, even if they’re shattered into pieces small enough to fit into his lungs.

SUNFLOWER  
Genus: _Helianthus_  
Meaning: adoration, devotion

Billy takes deep breaths and refuses to cry in public, even if he is tucked away within the safety of the Camaro.

It gets worse. So, so much worse. He’d assumed that he just needed to either ignore his feelings or use Harrington to slack his lust, and then the whole thing would go away. But he can’t seduce him into anything – whenever Billy flirts with him, no matter how borderline dangerous it is, Steve just gives him this head-tilted stare, as though Billy is speaking a foreign tongue.

He tries to fuck a girl on New Year’s Eve and ends up handing her punch until she passes out, because Billy knows as soon as she kisses him that if they go somewhere private, he won’t be able get it up unless Steve Harrington comes walking through the door bare-ass naked and sits in his lap. Instead of fucking Mary Ann Davison, Billy locks himself into the bathroom off Tina’s basement family room and vomit blue violets until his stomach cramps. _(Faithfulness, “I’ll always be true!”_)

For Valentine’s day, Steve hands out Reese’s in homeroom and though Billy normally has a coughing fit after a class with Harrington, he has to get a hall pass to run to the bathroom immediately. The whole cup-shaped head of a tulip, the blazing red of a setting sun, falls into his hands and he frantically throws it away (_passion, undying love_).

Winter becomes spring and Billy coughs more often, has to excuse himself once or twice a day from class. More covert research into the condition informs Billy that most people have a specific flower that their love inspires, often daffodils for unrequited love.

Not him, not Billy. Billy has whole bouquets ready for his love. It’s worse at night, and Billy has to get out of the house. It’s too obvious to spend an hour coughing in the bathroom and the sheer volume of blooms in his lungs make it impossible to throw into the garbage without someone in the family noticing.

There are no shortage of fields in Hawkins, Indiana. Billy resorts to picking one of the nice warm spring evenings. He coughs, he gags, he lets his love pour out into the grass and dirt, scattered in a riot of colors.

Camellias are still a popular choice, but he produces a lot of red carnations, too. His heart does ache. It aches for him.

Steve has made his heart as soft and sweet as summer fruit. But nothing Billy touches is truly soft or sweet. It’s all gone rotten in him, decayed and disgusting.

A waste, he thinks one night, tears pouring down his face as he is surrounded by a carpet of little yellow primrose. (_Eternal love, “I can’t live without you!”_). Some of them are spotted with blood, sometimes. And just like him, it all belongs in the trash. A waste of breath. A waste of time. A waste of love.

He can't give it up, he can't give it away. His love won't take it.

There’s no way for Billy to know that less than a mile down the road, another boy hides in his bed, Christmas lights twinkling overhead.

His heart is broken, because Steve thinks he’s made of fool’s gold. Something that everyone around him will clamber to grab for but only until they realize he’s not gold at all, but iron pyrite. A deception of value.

All his love is wasted, because it never means anything to the people he gives it to, no matter how much he has to give.

He’s shiny and worthless and easily discarded.


End file.
